ISSUE 4 | MAY 2011

THE PROGRESS OF MEMORY

the House of Atreus - Tantalus had served them human flesh - the end of social exchange between gods and mortals - « nothing that is great comes to the life of mortals without atë » - enough bones to build a temple to Ares - a bowl filled with human hands and feet - Thyestes and Aegisthus ought to die - an utterly trivial and laughably hubristic act - a new form of art, the tragedy - the apotheosis of the city

a girl-spy in the Resistance - intricately plotted daydreams - a New England landscape without trees - historical memories that verged on delusions - the Lost Cause of the Confederacy - something more ephemeral, what it was like - the past is unrelentingly unfamiliar - « an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ships » - « O that I were free! » - I can almost imagine

a caustically intoxicating Pisco Sour - a sober country would make a more responsible electoral decision - an untraceable gypsy cab racing breathlessly through Miraflores - Ollanta Humala - « Agua por Todos » - they cursed him between shots of grain whiskey - the spray-painted campaign promises of the losers - a choice between cancer and AIDS

some offenses are worse than capital - damnatio memoriae - « Let him kill me—provided he becomes emperor! » - a fascinating piece of gossip - a sex life subordinated to a political life - only a fear of posterity could have kept her vice in check - a poorly enacted shipwreck - « Strike here! »